Unpleasant Morning Surprise

In the middle of the night Joanna and I were awakened by a crying 5-year-old girl in our bed.  Emery occasionally has bad dreams and I will take her back to bed and lay next to her until everything is calm again and she falls asleep.  However, last night Joanna kept asking if Emery had a bad dream and her response was indecipherable.  The British who cracked Hitler's Enigma codes couldn't have figured out what Emery was attempting to tell us through her wails and sniffling.
After a few attempts to discover what was wrong, I simply gave up and told her to get under the covers with us.  She quickly fell asleep and all was good again.
Fast-forward to 6:30 this morning, with everyone waking from their interrupted slumber I asked Emery if she had a bad dream that led her to our bed.  She said it wasn't a bad dream.  So I continued with the interrogation and she finally told me that she had an accident in the bed.  A 5-year-old wetting the bed is no big deal in my opinion.  However, I freaked out a little because this means I slept with pee-pants in my bed last night.  I don't care that she pees in her bed.  I will be happy to change her pajamas and underwear and give her some new sheets or let her sleep with us like she did.  But I don't want to leave her in the soiled clothes and have her taint my bed as well.
So in the end, I woke up to a sleeping buddy who had pee-pants.  Great way to start the morning!

R.I.P. James Gandolfini

HBO's acclaimed mobster drama The Sopranos is a top three television show of all time for me.  The news that James Gandolfini died yesterday was extremely sad, not because I had some personal connection to the man or anything like that.  It simply brought back all the nostalgia of watching The Sopranos each week and enjoying one of the greatest characters TV has ever produced.  Tony Soprano was an evil human being that deserved no remorse, but Gandolfini did such an outstanding job with the character and the script that he got us to root for this gangster with very few redeeming qualities.  A character who should be reviled by all was a hero to many, but we couldn't come right out and cheer him along.
If you haven't seen The Sopranos and your morals allow for viewing extreme violence, graphic nudity, sexual situations, mature themes, and adult language, then I suggest watching the series soon.  If you have seen the show, watch it again and reflect on the actor who provided six seasons of an anti-hero we couldn't get enough of.

Book Recommendation

There is a lot of reading going on in my life.  In fact, pretty much every night before I go to sleep I will wind down with a book in bed.  I enjoy a lot of the classics and spy thrillers (especially James Bond, but that is pretty well established by all who are familiar with my tastes and interests).  Recently I started a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury.  I bought it in order to read A Sound of Thunder and enjoyed it so much that I decided to give all of the stories a go.
I have found most of the short stories to be entertaining, if not down-right enthralling.  Although a few haven't grabbed my attention, but that is what's great about a short story.  While you may not get into the narrative at first, it isn't a burden to finish the thing as it is only a few pages long.
One story that I found to be the most insightful of all so far was The Murderer.  It was written in 1953, but reads like it could have been penned in today's culture.  It reveals a world where machines that were created as a convenience have become hindrances on humans, but we have become so embracing of technology that we ignore the bombarding noises and cumbersomeness it has created.
It will only take a few minutes to get through and I highly recommend taking the time to do so.  Were I a literary teacher, this story would be required reading in my classroom.